Switched from Oracle BEA BPM Enterprise Version (on Weblogic) to the Standalone Version for Evaluation Purposes.

Last week was a very short week during which I tried to install an Enterprise BEA BPM on Weblogic. There were a lot of configurations needed for Enterprise WebLogic Edition (Directory Server, Database, Deployment within the WebLogic JVM etc). I have listed the steps below.

It was taking too much time and was not very straightforward. I had to ensure that I have installed and configured the BEA WebLogic application server properly even before I could debug & play with the BPM engine.

At end of last Tuesday I made a call to switch to Enterprise Standalone but the efforts put in were good learning and useful for Standalone Installation as well. So for the purpose of proceeding with evaluation going forward I have shifted to Enterprise Standalone Version as my focus is BPM.

Some learnings or observations .... On the Oracle website they refer to downloading Oracle BPM Enterprise Administration Guide.pdf but in real scenario there was no such file name. I realized that it was same as Oracle BPM Admin Guide.pdf and the same goes for configuration guide as well. So will not get confused in future :)

Ok so with the ultimate aim being to Deploying and Publishing a New BPM Project I had to go through a series of steps. (For standalone I needed a much smaller set but the practice and drill was worthwhile learning in terms of infrastructure and operationalization of product.

The whole list of steps:

1. Creating Directory Service ( need to configure Directory Database Schema)
2. Creating a Process Execution Engine ( need to configure a separate Execution Engine Database Schema)
3. Configuring Weblogic Server
4. Creating Weblogic Server Domain
5. Create Oracle BPM Deploy User
6. Installing Oracle BPM Deployer
7. Creating JDBC Data Sources on BEA Weblogic Server
8. Creating JMS Server, Module & Resources
9. Configuring the Deployer and Deployment Targets
10. Enabling Clustering
11. Building and Deploying Application EAR Files
12. Deploying and Publishing a New BPM Project

As of now I have Standalone Enterprise BEA BPM configured with Directory (Oracle 10g DB). Engine DB configuration has some issues due to privileges. Make sure you have a friendly DBA to help out.

I am trying to come up with a set of use cases to test out different features.

More next week as I try to put together a list of features .. dully prioritized that I will like to test out.

If you have a challenge for me ...Bring it ON :)

Currently evaluating Oracle BPM 10gR3

For the next one month I want to be critically evaluating Oracle BPM 10gR3. 

 

Yes this is the new face and name of  BEA Aqualogic BPM 6.5 , now with Oraclelization it is called as Oracle BPM 10gR3. Too early to make a comment.

 

My aim is to see how well Oracle has leveraged and integrated the BEA Aqua logic BPM products with its other products to offer a complete suite.

 

Getting started was easy .... Installed Oracle BPM Studio 10.3.0.0.0  from the link below. To get started

Please visit: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bpm/index.html

Here you will find download link – for initially getting your feet wet purposes, download of studio should suffice. Also, there is a tutorial and link to docs.

 

Installation was smooth, took around 60 Minutes. I referred to this site for the product documentation

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13154_01/bpm/docs65/index.html

 

One glitch ....

It took me 20 minutes to figure out why the "Launch Workspace" icon was disabled. Figured out that after designing the process I had unfortunately clicked on either "outline" or the "Log Pane" that exist below and clicking on those panes dynamical change the Menu and disable certain icons.

 

More later

 

Arvind

Finished Half Marathon of my pursuit of MBA

I have been quite busy last few months with double MBAs. One one side
was the collaboartion, group study, projects, assignments and homeworks
for CMU MBA. The other side was my younger one growing up. That was
another MBA (Managing Baby Administration)

Things are finally getting easier as I am approaching the final year of
my MBA. This was a perfect time for me to learn about "Marketing
Management", "Financial Accounting", "Production & Operations
Management" , "Macroeconomics", "Corporate Finance" & "Marketing
Research". With the current ecomonic situation I feel that every day I
use my Business & Financial learnings to analyze situations.

Here is a recent picture from one of the CMU social networking events.

Arvind

Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business - Part Time MBA Program

Quite many people have contacted me about the Carnegie Mellon part time MBA Program since I started the same in 2007. After having been through the experience for a year now, I can see direct applications of many of the Business School teachings to SOA world.

After all ... SOA & BPM is mostly about Business & IT alignment within an organization and in its partner eco system. So I though that it will be a good idea to write a summary about the CMU MBA program here in this blog.

Program Overview: I have been fortunate that the CMU MBA program is offered at Cisco Campus apart from their West Coast campus ( CMU West - http://west.cmu.edu/ ) in the Moffet Field (you can see signs on 101 north near Moffet Field exit). This is very handy at times when I need to hop out of meetings and join the class within minutes of getting out of office. It is first time at Cisco but the program itself was started in 1996.

It is delivered to corporate campuses in real-time via video-conferencing technologies and CISCO is leading the way with its TelePresence technology which is as real life as it can get. Others in the MBA class are from companies like Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, United Technologies, Oracle, Intel, Applied Materials, Pitney Browns etc.

Tepper MBA program is highly known in Financial & Operations Research area due to its stress on analytical approach to problem solving and decision making in complex and dynamic business environments. CMU Tepper is ranked 3rd in Wall Street Journal Rankings.

Part Time program has same admission/graduation criteria as it exists for Full/Part-time students in CMU Pittsburg Campus. More info at: http://www.tepper.cmu.edu

If you need more information please feel free to get in touch.

Arvind
arvindDOTjainATyahooDOTcom

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are my own and CISCO does not sponsor or endorse this program.

SOA on SOA !! - Bring the discipline of SOA to service development and creation in your organization.

SOA on SOA!!

It was difficult to put the most appropriate words to my thoughts but what I am trying to bring out is that SOA implementation should not burden the service providers and consumers to go through the burden of learning all the latest standards, tools & technologies.

They should just worry about their business logic and there should be a framework which transparently takes care of making that business logic a service as in SOA world while adhering to their company's enterprise policies, processes and standards.

How to enable this? Enterprise architects should closely watch two upcoming standards - SCA & JBI.

JBI is JSR 208 and called as Java Business Integration. SCA is Service component architecture.

JBI is used by system integrators during physical deployment (customers and end users do not see this). It helps in management & interoperability of your SOA infrastructure.

SCA has a design and composition perspective. It is used by developers to annotate or put notes in their code to describe service and their dependencies.

The aim is to create a virtual container for hosting services. This way services can be plugged into ESB or into an existing Policy Manager. It will be independent of language and will help as a framework for exposing business logic as service.

The other significant benefits I see are
- Consistent deployment & management
- Location Transperancy (Virtualization)
- Policy Enforcement
- Consistent Security Model
- SOA does not means every developer needs to know about WSDL or WS-* or other standards. They need to know the core business logic.
- It might possibly help in transaction coordination.

So let us try to use our own methodology SOA to help in implementation & adoption of SOA.

Arvind

How to take Build vs Buy decision in case of Software Products?

In the world of software development once in a while everyone reaches that crossroad where he needs to decide - Should we build that software or buy it? Build vs Buy !! Deal or No Deal !!

Here are suggestions that will help you. When making a Buy vs Build decision do the following:

• Consider only the costs that are affected by your decision (example you may or may not decide to buy additionaly 24X7 support)
• Include all Opportunity Costs (are you going to miss on some other core oppurtunity / project in your own industry)
• Ignore Sunk Costs, these are costs that have already been incurred (example can be hardware cost as either version of bought or in house build software will require similar hardware)Calculate total costs of each option. Total cost = fixed (avoidable) costs + variable (avoidable) costs
• Considering "Soft" or "Intangible" cost/benefits, for example future use of product or learning, team reputation or burden (in terms or learning or development), derivative products.

Other Important Hints/Viewpoints

• A very important consideration is to look at the Marginal cost i.e. the cost for deploying an additional host (cpu) with the same software.
• For coming up with oppurtunity cost - look at the nature of technology/product and its maturity level - analysis in the Short Run and in the Long Run
• Look at the service/product provider and its industry - will you be price taker or price chooser? How much can you negotiate? What are hidden benefits/costs of partnership?
• Evaluate options using the net present value (NPV) & internal rate of return (IRR) approach
• A little known fact is about the Basic Accounting ... Is it favourable for company's accounting? - This is very important as software bought is a depreciable asset for organization while software built will be treated as an ongoing expense without any balance sheet asset created out of it.

Hope you have some food for thought and solid points to make your case in your next board/council meeting.

Arvind

Does the best technology & architecture guarantee a successful SOA or BPM?

Have you ever wondered that given best technology & architecture ...Are you guarantee a successful SOA or BPM project?

Answer is a simple and a big NO.

There is much more to a successful SOA or BPM implementation & adoption then just choosing the right tools and technology and architecting the finest blueprints. The best and brightest team of IT architects and engineers definitely help to do the toughest of design & implementation projects .... but that is just half the task.

Embracing SOA or BPM or for that matter any new initiative like WEB 2.0 and Collaboration is a major change for the organization. By nature changes are difficult as people see change with a grain of salt and skepticism.

Hence the Architecture Community has an additional and significant responsibility to be the "Change Agents" in the organization. They need to understand basic human nature & group behavior in order to be successful in their SOA or BPM initiative. They need to understand that shift in attitude seldom comes at once. The rate at which different groups, divisions or individuals will adopt these changes will vary by individual, or the type of change or the organizational context.

They need to identify these stages of change and simultaneously work on those while doing their core IT or Business job.

Understand that it is not sufficient for just you to have adopted this change. You have to guide and lead the larger community through the various stages of change, namely

1) Awareness

2) Interest (people develop curiosity)

3) Trail (skepticism is overcome)

4) Adoption

I will further share my experience about managing change during these various stages in some later blog or if there is an interest in the community.

Arvind